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The Classic Doctor Who DVD Compendium – the complete guide to every disc and every extra – is available now in print and ebook. 436 pages detailing each release, all fully indexed for easy reference. Whether your collection is complete, still building or just starting, this is the perfect companion to the Classic Who DVD range.

The Classic Doctor Who DVD Compendium – the complete guide to every release from the original series – is published next Monday, 4 August 2014.

Sadly Amazon doesn’t seem to offer pre-orders on print-on-demand books, but it’s all ready to go so should be up for order promptly on the 4th. It’ll be available from Amazon UK here for £16.99 and Amazon US here for $30.99 (less any discount Amazon chooses to apply).

It should also be available as an ebook on Kindle and via Smashwords (and the retailers it supplies). I’m still going through the slightly tedious approval process for the e-edition but am hoping to have it sorted ready for next Monday, or shortly after. On Smashwords it’s priced at $15.99, and should be £8.99 once it’s on the Kindle Store.

Note that the ebook version doesn’t quite include all the content of the print edition. All the entries for the DVDs themselves are there in full, but there are a couple of tables that I had to omit as ebooks can’t do tables, and a couple of the indexes which were redundant as you can search in the ebook instead.

In my, humble, opinion the printed book is much nicer and easier to flick through to find entries and look up extras. But the ebook has the same functionality, with links throughout and a complete table of contents.

To mark the impending publication of my latest book, The Classic Doctor Who DVD Compendium, I’ve reduced the price of last year’s Time & Space Visualiser: The Story and History of Doctor Who as Data Visualisations by 20% to just £19.95/$30.30 (minus whatever further discount Amazon applies).

The book is 200 full-colour pages, packed with charts, diagrams and infographics about every aspect of the show’s production, fiction and transmission, providing a unique perspective on the Doctor’s 50 years of adventures.

I haven’t forgotten about the few outstanding DVD covers I need to do and will get to them eventually, but I’ve been busy over the last six months compiling my new book, THE CLASSIC DOCTOR WHO DVD COMPENDIUM.

This 440-page book (it’s an inch thick!) is the complete guide to the Classic Who DVD range, with all the information you need whether you’re still collecting or already have the full set. There are details of the discs’ releases, summaries of the stories and the restoration they’ve undergone for DVD, connections to other stories to help you discover similar adventures to those you love, and a comprehensive catalogue of every single extra on every single disc. Plus five appendices covering additional releases in the range, a full list of easter eggs and how to find them, release details for regions 2 and 4, and more. As well as six indexes of various aspects to help you instantly find any item on the discs you want to watch.

The release of Classic Who on DVD is probably the most comprehensive presentation of a television programme ever produced, and The Classic Doctor Who DVD Compendium is the ultimate companion to the complete range. Whether you’re diligently collecting every story or just picking from the eras you love, I hope you’ll consider buying the book, and maybe discover some fantastic content you missed.

I’m aiming to publish the book on 4 August 2014. It’ll be available in print through Amazon (print on demand), provisionally priced at £16.99/$30.99, and also as an ebook, details to be confirmed.

So the 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who is upon us. It really is impressive that a mere TV show has lasted that long. And while strictly speaking it hasn’t done so purely as a TV show, spending 15 years off-screen, it’s not like Doctor Who didn’t exist during that time. There were independently produced video episodes, audio-only adventures, Doctor Who Magazine and its continuously running comic strip and years’ worth of books of newly published stories. So on whatever basis you consider the programme to exist, it was there. And these weren’t obscure fan-only output, they were on sale in high street shops for anyone with an imagination to be captivated by. I’m not sure even Star Trek or Star Wars could boast quite the same level of continuity (though I won’t begrudge them their own half-century celebrations in 2016 and 2027).

Of course, were it not for the revival of the show in 2005, while we devotees might still have been marking the 50th in our own private ways, there wouldn’t have been any of the current furore both on screen and elsewhere (and it seems to have been celebrated on just about every medium this week). So whether you only count the Classic series as true Who, have never even seen 20th Century Who, think the series died in 1980, just like that one story you saw as a kid, or have never seen it but are intrigued by Peter Capaldi taking on the role — whatever your degree of interest in Doctor Who, today is the day to give thanks to everyone who has contributed in any way to the continuing saga and the entertainment, insight and sheer joy it has brought to millions of people around the world now and over the past 50 years. But also to remember that there’s still an infinite variety of places for the show to go and stories to tell. You never get over the excitement of wondering just where that incredible blue box will take us next…

Still working on the next DVD cover, but in the meantime anyone who’s interested in graphic design and data may like my new book, Time & Space Visualiser, which is now available from Amazon.

This is the first ever book to look at both the factual and fictional history of Doctor Who through data visualisations, presenting information about the show in a way never seen before.

Using a range of eye-catching graphics, it reveals who are the most popular writers and directors, all the places on Earth the Doctor has visited, which companions gained the most experiences from their travels, the most common comeuppances for New Series enemies, how long it would take to watch every episode back to back, and much more.

Each chart is accompanied by detailed notes discussing the background and context of the areas under examination, how the data was compiled and what it reveals.